Aggestam, Lena

Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences.

2008 (English)Doctoral thesis, monograph (Other academic)

Abstract [en]

Organizations use various resources to achieve business objectives, and for financial gain. In modern business, knowledge is a critical resource, and organizations cannot afford not to manage it. Knowledge Management (KM) aims to support learning and to create value for the organization. Based on three levels of inquiry (why, what, how), work presented in this thesis includes a synthesized view of the existing body of knowledge concerning KM and hence a holistic characterization of KM. This characterization reveals a strong dependency between KM and Learning Organization (LO). Neither of them can be successful without the other. We show that a KM project resulting in an IT-supported knowledge repository is a suitable way to start when the intention is to initiate KM work. Thus, our research focuses on ITsupported knowledge repositories.

Large numbers of KM projects fail, and organizations lack support for their KM undertakings. These are the main problems that our research addresses. In order for an IT-supported knowledge repository to be successful, it must be used. Thus, the content of the repository is critical for success. Our work reveals that the process of capturing new knowledge is critical if the knowledge repository is to include relevant and updated knowledge. With the purpose of supporting the capture process, this thesis provides a detailed characterization of the capture process as well as guidance aiming to facilitate the implementation of the capture process in such a way that knowledge is continuously captured, also after the KM implementation project is completed. We argue that the continuous capture of new knowledge which can potentially be stored in the knowledge repository will, in the long term perspective, have a positive influence on the usefulness of the repository. This will most likely increase the number of users of the repository and accordingly increase the number of successful KM projects.

All the work presented in this thesis is the result of a qualitative research process comprising a literature review and an empirical study that were carried out in parallel. The empirical study is a case study inspired by action research, which involved participation in the project Efficient Knowledge Management and Learning in Knowledge Intensive Organizations (EKLär).